Spatial skills are key predictors of achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, despite being acquired through everyday life and not formally taught in schools. Spatial skills include a diverse group of abilities broadly related to reasoning about properties of space such as distance and direction. Recently, more research has investigated the link between spatial skills and spatial anxiety, defined as a fear or apprehension felt when engaged in spatial thinking. There has yet to be a meta-analytic review summarizing these findings. Thus, the goal of this preregistered meta-analytic review is to provide an estimate of the size of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills while considering several moderators (grade/age group, sex, spatial skills measure/subtype, spatial anxiety measure/subtype, geographical region of sample, publication type/year, and risk of bias). Analyzing 283 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1994 and 2020, we found a small, negative, and statistically significant (r = -.14) correlation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills. Results showed that effect sizes including mental manipulation anxiety, scalar comparison anxiety, and navigation skill were often significantly stronger than effect sizes including measures of other subtypes. The magnitude of the relation was not significantly different in children and adults, though effect sizes tended to be weaker for younger samples (r = -.08). Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between spatial anxiety and skills, and this work bridges a gap in the existing research, lending support to future research efforts investigating spatial cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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空间焦虑与空间技能之间关系的荟萃分析综述。


空间技能是科学、技术、工程和数学学科成就的关键预测因素，尽管空间技能是通过日常生活获得的，并且没有在学校正式教授。空间技能包括与空间属性（例如距离和方向）的推理广泛相关的多种能力。最近，更多的研究调查了空间技能和空间焦虑之间的联系，空间焦虑被定义为在进行空间思维时感到的恐惧或忧虑。目前尚未有荟萃分析综述来总结这些发现。因此，这项预先注册的荟萃分析综述的目标是提供对空间焦虑和空间技能之间关系大小的估计，同时考虑几个调节因素（年级/年龄组、性别、空间技能测量/亚型、空间焦虑测量/亚类型、样本地理区域、出版物类型/年份和偏倚风险）。通过分析 1994 年至 2020 年间进行的研究中积累的 283 个效应大小，我们发现空间焦虑和空间技能之间存在微小的负相关且具有统计显着性 (r = -.14)。结果表明，包括精神操纵焦虑、标量比较焦虑和导航技能在内的效应大小通常明显强于包括其他亚型测量在内的效应大小。儿童和成人之间的相关性大小没有显着差异，但较年轻样本的效应大小往往较弱 (r = -.08)。我们的结果与之前关于空间焦虑和技能之间存在显着关系的发现一致，这项工作弥补了现有研究的空白，为未来调查空间认知的研究工作提供支持。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。